


Saudade

by MK_Yujji



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Gen, Pre-Slash, temporary zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 05:48:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1169427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MK_Yujji/pseuds/MK_Yujji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek and Cora left Beacon Hills behind without intending to go back.  When Stiles calls asking for Derek's help, though, he can't say no.  {definite spoilers for TW up through the end of 3A.  AU after that with a single mention of Kira and her circumstances (and ninjas) for 3B}</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saudade

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Teen Wolf Reverse Bang. I want to thank my artist, zerdavulpes, for being amazing! ^_^ 
> 
> [Art Masterlist](http://paradigm-shift.dreamwidth.org/15910.html#cutid1)
> 
>  
> 
> _Saudade - (n.) a nostalgic longing to be near again to something or someone that is distant, or that has been loved and then lost; "the love that remains"_

There was nothing but radio silence from Beacon Hills for months after Derek and Cora left.  Obviously Scott was turning out to be a better alpha than he’d ever been and no one needed or wanted his help.

Six months wasn’t all that long in the grand scheme of things, but it was long enough that Derek had stopped waiting for the pack he’d left behind to contact him.  Long enough to prove that ‘true’ alpha trumped any experience or advice one slightly bitter, possibly overly paranoid ex-alpha might have to offer.  It wasn’t long enough for that to stop stinging, just a little bit.

It’s nothing more than Derek expected so he wasn’t sure why he was disappointed.  

Maybe some small part of him had hoped for something more.  

They’d left Beacon Hills with nothing more than a note to Isaac, telling him that the loft was paid for and he could consider it home for as long as he wanted.  It wasn’t an apology for kicking him out after Kali’s threats, but it was the best Derek could bring himself to offer.

He didn’t even know if Isaac had gotten the note.  

So when they were settled in their matching beds in some no name motel in the middle of nowhere watching mindless television and his phone began vibrating across the desk, Derek could only stare at it dumbly.

Cora frowned at him from where she was sprawled out across her own bed.  “Are you going to check that?”

They both knew it had to be from Beacon Hills.  There was no one else outside of their room that knew his number.

The phone buzzed again, teetering ever closer to the edge of the desk as he just stared at it.

He bit his lip before pushing up off the bed and approaching his phone with the same caution he might have reserved for nest of potential hunters.  He didn’t have to be looking at her to know that Cora was rolling her eyes at him.

Frowning, he picked it up and stared at the screen for a long minute.  “It’s from Stiles.”

Behind him, Cora huffed.  As if that should be obvious. “What does he want?”

Six months and a few days ago and she’d have had something smartassed to say.  Stiles hadn’t exactly been her favorite person in Beacon Hills and she’d never been shy about that opinion.  

Then he’d saved her life and she was thrown into that confusing space between gratitude and annoyance.

Derek could empathize.  He owed his life to Stiles several times over and the teen had been the only one in all of the mess to even try to offer him any sympathy or comfort about any of it.  But Stiles could be so very _Stiles_ sometimes.  Throwing him into walls often seemed like the most rational way to deal with him.                                   
       
Shaking off the thought, Derek opened the message and stared some more.

“Derek?”

He turned to look at her, feeling the same helpless confusion that Stiles had always inspired in him.  There’d been times when he wasn’t even sure the spastic teen was even speaking in _English_.  His texts had always been a hundred times worse, but this was especially incomprehensible even for Stiles.  “I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.”

Rolling her eyes, Cora waved for the phone and he handed it over without protest. He was sure that some day she was going to roll her eyes right out of her head if she stayed with him long enough.

“Let’s see… the first one says - _Yo, Sourwolf.  Need you to come get your howl on.  Got some zombies with your name on them_ and the second one is - _Seriously.  Get here, As Soon As Possible. Before the full moon tomorrow night would be ideal._ ”  Cora dutifully translated the text speech into real English, but it didn’t really help Derek understand what was going on.  Her frown deepened as she tossed the phone back to Derek.  “Are zombies even real?”

“Supposedly?”  He ran a hand through his hair and tried not to consider some of the stories he’s heard.  If any of them were true, then the movies didn’t do their viciousness justice.  “I’ve never seen one.”

She waited a second, staring at him as he stared at his phone.  Then she sighed.  “Well.  Call him back.  Find out what the hell he wants.”

“Right.”  His finger hovered over the call icon, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to push it.  “He’s probably just messing with us.”

Because if he wasn’t, Derek didn’t understand how his _howl_ was going to do anything against a _zombie_.

“Derek, just fucking call him already.”

He frowned at her.  “Don’t cuss.”

“I’ll cuss if I want to.   _Call him_.”

At least she hadn’t said ‘ _you’re not my alpha_ ’.  He’d had enough of that phrase to last him a lifetime.  

He bit his lip for a moment and then pushed call before he could talk himself out of it.  It was probably nothing.

“Oh thank god.  I thought you were going to ignore me.  Or you know.  That you’d changed your number.  Or hell, maybe you guys got- no.  Not going there.  Not the issue.  Have you not watched the news at all?  Are you in Hermitville with no electricity and no television?  You need to get here.  Like yesterday.  If, you know, time travel was possible.  Which would be- no.  That’s not what I was going to say.  I had this rehearsed and everything.”  Derek could hear Stiles forcing himself to take a deep breath.  “Derek, please.  Will you come back to help us with this?”

“Zombies.”  Even as he said it, he waved at Cora to flip through the channels and see if they couldn’t find some idea of what Stiles was talking about.  A couple of zombies could probably be kept under the radar, the same as a few rabid wolves.  Hunters were particularly good at making up stories to keep the supernatural world under wraps.

A horde, though…  That would make the news.  It didn’t take her long to find a station that was talking about the emergency quarantine of a small town in California.  It was an obvious cover job, though, and the newscaster didn’t seem to be giving them any relevant information.

Stiles snorted.  “Yes, zombies.”

“Stiles, I don’t know how to stop zombies.”

“Lucky for you, I do.  I just can’t do it without you.”

“You have an alpha for that sort of thing.  In fact, last I knew, you had three.”

It was bitter thing in Derek’s stomach to know that Scott had been willing to accept the twins into the pack after everything.  

“Yeah well.  Let’s just say that these zombies have special circumstances.  Scott’s attempts at handling it aren’t exactly helping the situation and trust me when I say that none of us want the twins dealing with it even if they still had the power, which they don’t.  They’re not completely horrible anymore, but they uh… their compassion for everyone else’s feelings on the matter is limited.”

Derek and Cora shared a confused look.  “I don’t understand.”

“Look, I will explain everything once you get here.  In detail.  With a powerpoint presentation if it helps.  But the point is that I need you to get here.  Sooner is better.”

Though she rolled her eyes, Cora was already up repacking their bags.  

Derek sighed.  “We’re on our way.”

~*~*~

The trip back to Beacon Hills was noisier than the one away from it had been.  Cora was using both her phone and Derek’s to go through all the news reports that had come out of Beacon Hills since the quarantine had been initiated.  There were already conspiracy theories flying around, apparently, and Cora felt the need to read each one aloud.  Then she spiraled from there to her own theories about what had happened based on what she could find and what little Stiles had said.

She called it family brainstorming even though Derek wasn’t contributing much.

A little under twenty hours after they’d gotten the call from Stiles, they slowed down for a quarantine border just outside of Beacon Hills.  

“It’s like something out of Resident Evil,” Cora commented, looking at the mass of military and medical personnel set up at the city limits.  A fence stretched around the town itself, razorwire along the top.  There were soldiers stationed at random intervals, allowing the small mass of civilians on either side of the fence to speak to each other from a distance.  Most wore medical masks, as if that might protect them from _zombies_.

One of the phones in Cora’s hands beeped and she thumbed through a text message.  “Stiles says to park, but to stay in the car and his Dad will come out to meet us.”

Derek eased the car into the temporary parking lot set up near the tent city of officials.

“Look, Cora.. Maybe you should stay here.”  He held up his hands in surrender as she glared at him.  “I’m just saying.  Stiles only said he needed me.  What little I’ve heard about zombies - real zombies, not, video games or whatever - they’re dangerous.   _Really_ dangerous.”

“More dangerous than ending up as a pawn in between an Alpha-pack/darach death match?”

She had a point and before Derek could decide how best to answer it, a quick double bang on to roof of the car jerked his attention away from her.

Sheriff Stilinski was leaning near the window, a medical mask pulled down around his throat.

Derek lowered the window.  “Sheriff.”

“Derek.  Good to see you.”  He passed in a pair of the masks and waved at their faces.  “You know and I know that these aren’t going to do a damned thing, but as long as the news crews are hanging around, we have to observe the letter of the quarantine, even if we’re running roughshod on the spirit.”

“Stiles said something about zombies?”  Derek let a little of his incredulity slip into his voice and the Sheriff sighed.  

“Yeah.  He can do a far better job at explaining things than me.  There was something about a coven and a territory dispute and… hell if I know.  It was a little crazy, but after alpha packs and darachs and hunter wars, to say nothing of those damned ninjas and the kitsune a few months back, I’m starting to think everyone’s drinking from the special kool-aid these days.”  Sighing again, the sheriff straightened up and backed away so that Derek could get out of the car.  “The good news is that the pack has actually dealt with all but two of the zombies.  Also, the CDC has managed to treat most of the outbreaks even if they seem to think Beacon Hills is a hotbed of fascinating medical mysteries.”

“And the bad news?”  

The Sheriff just gestured for them to follow and led them over to one of the tents.  “The bad news is that the last two zombies aren’t just your average, everyday zombies.”

“What do you mean?”

“He means they’re super-zombies.”

Derek twisted around to see Stiles pushing away from a computer station that had been set up.  “Stiles.”

“Derek.”  Stiles nodded and got up, reaching out to shake Derek’s hand.  There was something in his eyes, something older and harder than the boy that had been there six months before.  “Thanks for coming.”

“It didn’t really seem like I had much of a choice.”

The teen made a face, but his hands flapped in a gesture that seemed to say ‘poh-tay-toe/poh-tah-toe’.  “Still.”

“Hey, loser,” Cora said, an almost unwilling fondness in her voice.  “You promised us powerpoint.”

Stiles grinned and flipped her a salute.  “And I could do that if anyone would give me access to markers and poster boards, but apparently people think I’m gonna start sniffing the ink or something.”

“Stiles.”  The sheriff pinched the bridge of his nose with an expression of long-suffering patience.  “How about you just tell them what happened and what you need Derek for?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he waved off his dad and settled back down.  “Okay, see it’s actually pretty simple.  Scott, while being a wonderful human being and far smarter than most people give him credit for, is too fucking nice to be an alpha.  He’s got no sense of discipline or offense.  He insists on believing what someone tells him until they prove otherwise.  He’s like… your polar opposite.  It’s insane.  You did the entire ‘guilty-until-I-kill-them’ and he does the entire ‘innocent-until-they-kill-us’ and you both suck.  It’s like… if you were one person, maybe we could get a decent alpha between your extremes, but hey, that doesn’t seem very likely, does it?”

“Stiles.”

This time Derek could actually see the wheels derail from the tangent Stiles had been on.  The teen held up his hands in a stopping gesture and took a deep breath.  “Right.  Anyways, so these witches came in making nice.  I pointed out that historically, witches aren’t the most honest people out there and that they tend towards their own version of xenophobia, but I was outvoted.”

“As you keep telling _everyone_ ,” the Sheriff pointed out, wryly.

Stiles just grinned.  “Well, obviously.  If the only good thing that comes from me being right is the ability to rub it in everyone else’s faces, I’m taking it.”

“Where do the zombies come in?”  Derek was getting the feeling that if he left it up to the Stilinskis the story could take all night.  He’d forgotten, somehow, about Stiles’ ability to ramble off-topic.

“I’m getting there.”  Stiles rolled his eyes.  “The thing about zombies is that they’re not naturally occurring.  Not like weres or even witches and druids and stuff.  A zombie is what happens when someone - usually a witch, but not always - raises a dead body.  How you raise the body determines what kind of zombie you get.  That’s why there’s such a disparity in the entire zombie mythos.  This is definitely one of those cases where intent is everything.  If a grieving father tries to raise his dead kid, he’d get something mindless and slow.  The body reanimated to approximate what the father remembers.  Those invariably get released as soon as the father realizes what the hell he's actually done.”  Stiles paused and glanced at all three of them to make sure they were following.  Then he nodded and continued.  “If, on the other hand, you were a coven of witches intent on stealing territory from a pack of werewolves….”

His hands waved in a gesture of ‘come on, you know the answer to this’.

Cora answered.  “You get something that’s strong, fast, and mean.”

Stiles touched the tip of his nose with a finger.  “Bingo.  We have a winner.  Also, being better able to work magic than your everyday average grieving father, you’d be able to pinpoint the strongest corpses in any given area to make your zombies with.”

That hit Derek square in the chest.  This was Beacon Hills.  The Hales had held the territory since it’s settlement in the 1800s.  There were literally centuries of werewolf corpses to choose from.  He wanted to be wrong, but the look on Stiles’ face said that he knew exactly where Derek’s mind had gone and he wasn’t denying it.

“The age and condition of the corpse also plays a factor in whether or not it’d be acceptable for the cause.  Most of the werewolves who’ve died around here didn’t exactly leave tidy corpses.”  Though his voice was unflinching, there was sympathy in Stiles’ eyes as he watched Derek.  “When I realized what was happening, I was afraid we were going to have to deal with Kali and Ennis, but apparently they were both cut in half before they were buried.”

Which only left two whole werewolves buried in Beacon Hills in the last year or so.  

“Boyd and Erica.”  Derek took a deep breath, refusing to acknowledge how shaky it was.  “Stiles, I don’t know what you think I can do, but… I _can’t_ kill them again, okay?  Even if they’re not… there.”

Long fingered hands slashed through the air in front of Stiles.  “No, I know that.  I wouldn’t ask you to do that, Derek.  I mean, I’ll be the first to admit that I can be an insensitive asshole, but that’d be low even for me.”  He paused, peering at Derek with an earnest expression.  “I _wouldn’t_ do that to you.  I promise.”

Cora crowded in close and Derek took comfort in her presence, in the reminder that he wasn’t alone.  “Then what?”

Biting his lip, Stiles shrugged and laced his fingers together.  He settled them on his stomach and leaned back, favoring them with a considering look.  Whatever he was looking for, he seemed satisfied that he’d found it after a moment.  He nodded and sighed.  “I’ve been training to be an Emissary.  Sort of. I don’t know if Scott told you that.”

Derek shook his head.  Scott hadn’t told him anything.  

Beside him, Cora’s eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms.  “What do you mean ‘sort of’?”

“Let’s just say that Deaton and I have vastly different opinions on how much ‘non-interference’ is actually acceptable in any given situation.  But he agrees that it’d be better to train me himself than… how did he put it?”  Stiles looked to his dad with a raised eyebrow.

The sheriff snorted.  “To let you wander around starting more supernatural fires than he could put out.”

Stiles mimed firing a gun in his dad’s direction.  “Yeah, that.  So I’ve been training up on magic and stuff.  It’s actually insanely cool and has come in super handy during this mess.  We dealt with the witches and put most of the zombies back in their graves where they belong.  Thankfully, zombies don’t actually transfer their zombie-ness to other people via bites - not even were-zombies.  They do, however, seem to carry a fair amount of general pestilence - who knew? - which is why the CDC ended up getting involved.  But other than the very human diseases, it was all handled.  No fuss, no muss. Just another day in the life of Beacon Hills.  Except.”

“Erica and Boyd.”  It was easier to say the second time around.  

Stiles leaned forward.  “The thing is, I think we can save them.”

~*~*~

As plans went, it wasn’t the worst one that Derek had ever been involved in.  Given how low the bar had been set since his first return to Beacon Hills, that wasn’t really saying much.

He tugged his shirt off and threw it down near the pack that Stiles had set off to one side.  

The full moon was shining brightly above their heads and he could feel the power of it singing through his blood.

Around them, the Preserve was eerily quiet, as if the forest itself knew that there were unnatural things lurking within it.  He knew that Scott’s pack was spread out somewhere out there.  He could pinpoint the three closest - Scott, Isaac, and Allison - easily.  He suspected that Scott had asked Ethan and Aiden to take the far perimeter specifically so that they couldn’t be close enough to interrupt however much of Derek’s attention this ritual needed.  Lydia and a girl named Kira, who’d been introduced as the resident kitsune, were running interference back in town.

No one else was within a hundred yards of the clearing where he stood watching Stiles, though.

“Are you sure this will work?  I’m not an alpha anymore.”

Stiles sighed a sound of deep long-suffering, like Derek was just being difficult instead of expressing a legitimate concern.  He looked up from where he was drawing symbols into the dirt.  “Derek.  I have already _told_ you-”  he cut himself off and shook his head sharply, before starting on the symbols again.  There were a few minutes of silence as he finished his task.  Then he pushed himself back to his feet and dusted off his hands.   Only when he was completely done did he beckon Derek closer and deign to answer.  “Think of it as…  a rechargeable battery.  The battery is never _not_ a battery.  Sometimes it just doesn’t have a charge.  If you never recharge it again that doesn’t mean it suddenly becomes a unicorn.  It’s still a battery.  Once you’re an alpha, you’re never _not_ an alpha.  You’re just an alpha without power.”

“Being an alpha _is_ having power.”  He let his eyes flash blue for a moment, in case Stiles had forgotten the change in his status.  

“Derek, if you don’t believe this even has a chance to work, then we’ve already failed.  I told you.  Intent and belief.  They’re the two more important things in spell-casting - especially a ritual like this one - and you are seriously messing with my mojo here.”  He reached out with a confidence he wouldn’t have had even a year ago and squeezed Derek’s shoulders.  It was startling to realize that Stiles had actually gotten _taller_ than Derek and that he was growing into his once gangly limbs.  “Do you remember that moment when the bite took and you first felt the bond between you spring to life?”

Eyes slipping closed, Derek couldn’t help but nod.  It wasn’t something he’d _ever_ forget.  The rush of power, the sense of rightness, of _pack_.   He hadn’t felt it with Jackson - which, in retrospect, should have told him everything he’d needed to know about the entire kanima situation - but with the others… He’d wanted the connection of the pack bonds even more than he’d wanted the power.

He’d missed his family and his pack so much, but for a few brief, shining moments, he’d almost had something of it back.

Stiles’ voice was soft and soothing.  His hands slid down to Derek’s biceps, but he didn’t let go.  “Focus on that.  Focus on the feeling of protectiveness and care.  On how it felt to be their alpha.”

“It was a pain in the ass,” Derek couldn’t help but mumble, even as he relaxed further and focused.

“Worth it, though,” Stiles returned with a huff of amusement.  It wasn’t a question.  

Derek nodded, anyways.  “Always.”

His three betas had been cocky, arrogant, disrespectful, and just plain dumb in turns.  There’d been times when he’d wanted to smother each of them.  Times when he’d wanted to bash his own head against a wall in the frustration of dealing with them.

He’d been hopelessly out of his depth, had never been prepared to be anything more than a beta himself.  He hadn’t ever wanted to be more.  He hadn’t needed Scott and Stiles to tell him how horrible of an alpha he’d been.  It had been glaringly obvious almost from day one.

But despite everything, Derek had loved them.  He doubted that any of the three betas would have ever believed it, but he had.  He still did.

Finding Erica’s dead body in that bank… feeling Boyd’s lifeblood spill out over his claws…  

He hadn’t even realized that he could still hurt that badly.

Even feeling his bond to Isaac stretch to nothingness as the beta began to align with Scott had been it’s own form of torture.

“That’s good, Derek.  That’s real good.”  Pressure against his arms made Derek shift to the side.  He probably should have opened his eyes or objected to Stiles’ manhandling, but it was just easier to let the teen do what he wanted.  “Okay, now it’s important that we don’t break the circle, so you need to step backwards very carefully, exactly how I tell you to, okay?  All right, left foot first, step up… now.  Okay.  Now right foot.  And step now.  That’s good.”

Derek could feel the second he fully crossed the border of the circle.  His skin buzzed with magic and his breath caught against the feeling that pressed against his chest.  

It felt like _pack_ , whole and unfettered.

For a moment, Stiles held him still, his hands pressed tight against Derek’s arms, anchoring him through the rush of magic.  They patedt him soothingly before Stiles moved away.  He didn’t go far, though. Derek could hear him crouch nearby and shift through the things he’d brought with them.  The cloying sweet scent of one of the rarer breeds of wolfsbane filled the air, mingled with another spicy scent that Derek couldn’t identify.

“Okay, I need you to hold onto that feeling, all right?  No matter what happens, no matter how much it hurts.  You hold on to how it felt to be their alpha. Hold on to the connection, and you don’t let go.”

“What’s going to happen?” Derek couldn’t help but ask, even though he did as Stiles asked and sank into the feeling, concentrating on it almost entirely.

“We’re going to lure them into the circle, you’re going to sacrifice a little blood, I’m going to work my magic-” he broke of with a snort of amusement at his own pun, but didn’t go spiraling off-topic “-and then, when we’re all done, they’ll back to normal.”

“Just like that?”  He wasn’t being skeptical, necessarily.  It just sounded too simple.  Of course, Peter’s resurrection had seemed simple from his side of things, too.  Painful and horrific, but simple.

“Just like that.”

Stiles’ heartbeat never faltered.

Derek took a deep breath and nodded, letting himself believe in the steady sound.  “Okay.”

After another minute of quiet preparations, he could hear Stiles join him in the circle.  The scent of herbs and wolfsbane was stronger.  “This is going to burn a little, okay?  But I promise that it’s not enough to actually hurt you.”

It was all the warning he got before Stiles pressed a wet hand against the triskelion on his back.  At first it was just cold and wet, but he sucked in a sharp breath as the skin started to burn.  

He really hated wolfsbane.

A second hand, this one thankfully dry and free of burning herbs, settled on Derek’s shoulder.  When Stiles spoke again, the words were barely a whisper against Derek’s ear.  “Call your betas home, Alpha.”

The howl tore out of his throat and echoed through the forest.  It carried with it his love and mourning, his fear for his lost pack mates and every bit of how much he missed them.  It asked for their return and demanded it at the same time.

In the distance, Cora’s howl answered him.  He hadn’t expected that, but it felt right.  He could feel his bond to her swell and knew that she was coming even though she’d been left on the other side of the fence with the Sheriff.

From the town proper, another howl answered and Derek knew it was Peter.  Another surprise and this time he could feel a sickness permeating their bond.  It seemed to shiver as Peter responded to Derek’s call in spite of himself.

The third howl was much closer and the bond snapped tight from seeming nothingness, almost glowing with its intensity.  He could actually hear the teen leave his hiding place in the trees and head towards the clearing.

There was a long moment of silence that was only interrupted by Isaac settling near the circle, then a pair of howls came from somewhere near the ruins of his old home.

The gaping emptiness where his bonds to Erica and Boyd used to be flared to life, painful and far more sickly than his bond to Peter.  The feeling of rot and distortion was a jagged wound that grated on his mind.

Derek howled again, hurrying his pack along.  He could feel a build up of power somewhere deep inside him.  It seemed to crawl towards the surface, towards the hand pressed against his tattoo.

He could hear the rapid progress that the were-zombies were making as they crossed through the preserve.  The forest was alive with sound as everyone closed in.

Erica and Boyd would reach the clearing before anyone else, though.  They were moving faster, completely ignoring the obstacles in their path.  

“Steady,” Stiles murmured against his ear, just as the pair burst into the clearing.  

Derek didn’t have time to open his eyes and confirm what his ears were telling him before the stench hit him.  The snarling, clawing were-zombies hit a second after that.  He didn’t think, he simply reacted.  Both hands snapped out, catching them both by the neck.  

They were strong and wild in their feral determination, but he was stronger.

Claws ripped into his arms and chest, but Derek felt strangely numb to it.  The only thing he could actually feel was the burn of Stiles’ wolfsbane covered hand against his back and the ebb and flow of the packbonds.

Behind him, Stiles began to speak but Derek didn’t understand the words.  It didn’t sound like Latin, or any of the other languages that Derek was familiar with.

The hum of magic grew stronger around them in response to whatever Stiles said.

He pulled his thoughts away from the puzzle of Stiles words and concentrated on the memories of his bonds with Erica and Boyd when they’d been alive and healthy.  He remembered the exasperated amusement as Erica and Isaac had done their best to emulate their alpha.  All three of the betas he’d turned had been like butterflies bursting out of the cocoons of their humanity.  

Cora and Peter closed in from opposite sides of the clearing, but they didn’t breach the circle.

The burn against his back grew more intense and Derek had to take a deep breath to keep from flinching away.  Stiles hadn’t said, but somehow he knew that the contact was important.

Fire seemed to travel through his body and outwards into the bonds.

Outside the circle, Peter tried to stifle a sound of pain.  Derek could hear Scott asking if he was okay, if the ritual was working.  Someone shushed him.  Allison, probably.  

None of it was enough to distract Derek from the memory of Erica tossing her hair as she’d stepped out of the salon that very first day when he’d taken his new wolves shopping.  Her amazed delight at the way Boyd and Isaac had both stopped bickering over where to go next and simply stared at her.  The sweet way Boyd had smiled at her.

He’d known, then.  Love and pack and rightness had flared bright and strong.

He wanted that back.

“Alpha Hale, are these your betas?”  Stiles asked, his voice deeper than Derek was used to and formal in a way that Stiles didn’t usually speak.

“Yes, Emissary.”  He wasn’t sure where the title came from, but it felt right.

“Will you keep them close?  Protect them to the best of your ability and assure that they will never be used in this manner again?  Will you love them openly so that they may love you in return and will not be tempted to stray again?”

“Yes, Emissary.”

“Do you accept the authority of your Mother Moon and her right to judge the worthiness of your pledge?”

“I do.”

“Then stand and be judged.”

For a moment there was complete silence and stillness. even the were-zombies seemed sentient enough to understand the weight of what was to come.

Then the glow of the moon became blinding, even through his closed lids.  On and on, it seemed to shine. When it dimmed again, he opened his eyes and had to stifle a whimper.

His mother stood before him, close enough to touch if he dared to let go of Erica and Boyd.  She smiled the same loving smile that he remembered.  

The burn of tears blurred his vision and he tried to blink them away, but that only made it worse.

 _I’m so proud of you, Derek._  Her voice seemed to echo around them, but her mouth never opened.   _You never gave up, no matter how hard it got.  And you’re a better man than you’ve ever given yourself credit for._

One hand, paler in death than it ever would have been in life, reached forward and brushed a tear off his cheek.   _You have been judged worthy of your pack._

She leaned forward and kissed his brow.  Icy fire spread from the point of contact, overwhelming the burn of wolfsbane and moving onward, into the packbonds.  

The rot and sickness that had been layered over them was burned away, leaving the bonds stronger than they’d ever been before.

Erica and Boyd jerked sharply under his hands, strangled noises coming from their throats before they both collapsed in his grip.

His hands gentled and he pulled them in closer.  

“So mote it be.”  Stiles’ voice weaved together with his mother’s, strong and surreal.  Then the teen yelped slightly, sounding like himself again.  The pressure of his hand lessened until it was almost gone before pressing more firmly against the werewolf’s back.  “Oh wow, was not expecting that part.”

Derek didn’t have to ask what he meant.  He could feel the new bond stretching between them, Alpha to Emissary.  He sank to his knees and cradled his betas against him.  He could hear new blood pumping through their veins, could feel the rush of air as they took their first breaths in months.  The putrid smell of death and disease was blown away with the wind, leaving only the scent of new beginnings.

Behind him, his new emissary sank down to lean against Derek's back and he could feel the curve of Stiles’ smile against his shoulder.  “You did it.”

“We did it.”

Stiles huffed a laugh and banged his head against Derek’s shoulder a few times but didn’t disagree.

He looked up to see Scott crouching outside the circle in front of him.  The teen alpha was smiling even though he had to realize that at least two members of his own pack were now firmly tied to Derek.

“Fuck, I guess this means we’re moving back, doesn’t it?”  Despite the harshness of her words, Cora was smiling when he glanced at her.

“Don’t cuss.”  Derek couldn’t help but smile back, though, feeling more content and at peace than he had in a long time.  

Somehow, he had a feeling that things might just be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> I had to think long and hard about including the Derek/Stiles pre-slash tag. Even though I wrote it from the mental place of "Derek and Stiles will end up together if they continue along this path", there's nothing particularly overt. Of course, then my beta pointed out that Stiles spends a good portion of the fic with his hands all over Derek, so... I don't know. 
> 
> If I ever write a sequel to this - and I might, I have some ideas of where it would go - it would fall squarely into the slash category.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Campfire ghost stories](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2131722) by [Hecateae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecateae/pseuds/Hecateae)




End file.
